Controlled Chaos Film Festival comes to Cullowhee

Films created by Western Carolina University students will be screened at the fifth annual Controlled Chaos Film Festival at 7 p.m. Friday, May 3, in the Bardo Fine and Performing Arts Center at WCU.

The festival features short works from a range of genres and senior project films created entirely by students from the Motion Picture and Television Production Program and School of Stage and Screen.

“Controlled Chaos is the highlight of the Stage and Screen production season,” said Tom Salzman, director of the school. “It’s a combination of our motion picture and our theater students being represented in one festival. These students have been working all year on these films, and it shows.”

The first senior film, “Emeralds of the East,” is a coming-of-age drama about Carver, a boy being raised by a single mother in the Appalachian Mountains during the 1940s. The second film, “Jerry,” is a dark “bromantic” comedy centered on a homeless man who comes back to haunt the local politician, Dick Heard, who ran him over.

In addition, a short teaser for a third film, a documentary to be titled “Cataloochee,” will be shown. When complete, the film will tell the story of the valley from the Cherokee origins of the land to the movement to create the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Admission is $10, cash only, at the door. Proceeds and donations benefit the Motion Picture Student Project Fund, which helps students with the cost of creating their senior films.

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